19 Pearls of Elegant Wisdom from Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel was born on August 19, 1883, and this week celebrates her 131st birthday. As a result, I’ve rounded up some of the incredible pearls of wisdom from the rebellious superstar stylist, who has shaped the world’s thoughts on perseverance, prevailing, and carrying oneself gracefully through time and space.

In Chanel’s words, we find a beautiful testament to the timelessness of glamor, and how to pay homage to this.

1. Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Coco Chanel

2. A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

3. In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

4. Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

5. Fashion fades, only style remains the same.

6. Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.

7. Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.

8. Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

9. Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

10. Elegance is refusal.

11. It is always better to be slightly underdressed.

Salvador Dali and Coco Chanel

12. How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

13. The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

14. Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

15. I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

16. A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.

17. Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.

18. My friends, there are no friends.

19. Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.